Case Study

With more than 45 million players in 2023, golf’s popularity boom is holding steady. The game is also enjoying a diversifying base and an increasing number of ways to participate with alternatives like indoor virtual golf and outdoor TopGolf.

The conflux of a rapidly growing and diversifying player base and the increasing number of ways to participate raise questions about the underlying golf market structure.

NGF was interested in segmenting the roughly 65 million Americans (45 million who played in 2023 + 20 million very interested) into meaningful and differentiated groups to help golf businesses think about the ‘modern golfer’ in a smarter, modern, human and more nuanced way.

We leveraged our BrightBoard platform to gather input on the need states golf satisfies (the rational and emotional reasons people play/are interested in playing). This qualitative input was used to create need state batteries.

These need-state batteries were incorporated into a large-scale quantitative survey of active golfers (from the NGF database) and a panel sample that was screened for those at least somewhat interested in golf.

We derived a 9-segment solution model driven by need states for active and infrequent/interested golfers; profiled each segment based on distinct characteristics; and prioritized target segments based on volumetrics and effective messaging.